The Billionaire's Trophy(45)

Bastian supposed she was offering him an olive branch of sorts and had a sudden recollection of that written apology on her hand way back at the start of their acquaintance. He almost smiled but the strained look in her bright blue eyes made him tense up instead.

* * *

‘What did you say?’ Emmie prompted Bastian in a nervous whisper, her cheeks burning after he had finished addressing his household staff, who had assembled in the big hall to greet their arrival. The official line-up struck her as incredibly Edwardian in style and thoroughly intimidated her. To be fair, she thought unhappily, it was embarrassing enough to reappear on the island on Bastian’s arm while toting an enormous pregnant stomach, but it was even worse when absolutely everyone else was pointedly avoiding looking in that direction.

‘Why?’ Bastian asked shortly as he guided her up the main staircase with a firm hand at her back. Emmie wondered if he feared that she was so big upfront that she might over-balance and fall over backwards like a beached whale, and then scolded herself for being so self-critical. You’re very pregnant with twins, get over it, she told herself in exasperation.

‘I’m curious,’ Emmie admitted.

‘I told them that you’re in charge here now—’

‘You did...what?’ Emmie stopped dead to exclaim in astonishment.

Bastian frowned. ‘I didn’t want anyone wondering about what your status was here and I want you to receive the very best attention possible from my staff.’

‘But I’m not the mistress here...or wife or whatever!’ Emmie argued.

‘Do we need a label for you? To all intents and purposes you are the most important woman I’ve ever had in my life,’ Bastian countered. ‘You’re expecting my children.’

‘I can’t possibly be the most important woman...I mean, what about your mother?’

‘Apart from the fact that I’d have a problem if she was still the most important woman at my age,’ Bastian quipped, ‘what about her?’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes. She lives in Italy and I only see her if she wants money.’

Emmie’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s sad, Bastian. Are you sure you’re not misjudging her?’

‘Remind yourself of what your mother was willing to do to you in the name of profit,’ Bastian commented with considerable cynicism. ‘As the son of a woman even more mercenary than Odette, I know what I’m talking about.’

That reminder about Odette’s greed struck home but Emmie gave him a troubled look, dismayed by his outlook. ‘Why do you think your mother’s like that?’

Bastian sighed as he threw wide the door of the room where Emmie had stayed on her previous visit to his home. ‘Why are you interested?’

Emmie thought fast and hard, desperate to come up with an unemotional angle to conceal her revealing hunger for every detail she could glean about Bastian and his background. ‘Your mother will be my children’s grandmother.’

‘But Cinzia will never visit your children. Even when I was a little boy she found the idea of being seen with a child as “too aging”,’ he retorted drily. ‘She’s very vain and will never accept being a grandparent. She was a film star when my father met her but her earning power was fading because she was getting older. She married him because she needed a meal ticket and when she got tired of him, she divorced him in a process that took half of everything he possessed.’

Emmie winced as a servant settled her cases down in the beautifully appointed bedroom and withdrew. ‘Nasty.’

‘His ego battered, my father found comfort in the arms of his secretary instead,’ Bastian continued even more drily. ‘The secretary got pregnant and he married her within weeks of his divorce from my mother being granted.’

‘Oh dear,’ Emmie remarked a good deal less securely as she wondered if he saw a dangerous parallel in that development between past and present: his father had married a woman because she fell pregnant by him and clearly it hadn’t worked out.

‘She was Nessa’s mother and the only decent woman my father ever married,’ Bastian explained wryly. ‘But because my father wasn’t in love with her...’ contempt edged his tone as he voiced that particular word ‘...he thought it was acceptable to start an affair with the woman who became his third wife.’#p#分页标题#e#

‘Then I gather that Nessa’s mother didn’t last long?’

‘Two years.’

Emmie recalled Nessa telling her that her mother had been the only stepmother who was kind to Bastian and, considering his own mother had not set a good example of maternal affection, she found it sad that his father’s marriage to Nessa’s mother had been so brief. ‘And wife number three?’